


songs of experience

by forthreaching



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-19 16:10:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5973667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthreaching/pseuds/forthreaching
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five things Rey has experience with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	songs of experience

**I. Alcohol**

After the sun sinks in Jakku, there isn’t much of anything to do.

Unkar shuts his window close when the sky is somewhere between black and orange and it’ll be a hungry night if you don’t manage to get your trading done before then. Operating in the Niima Outpost means that the market is always open but the portions are meager and the sellers aren’t as keen to do business with scavengers. There are, after all, passing traders with _actual_ credits to spend.

When Rey was younger, nights meant being corralled along with the other cadre of children Unkar kept around and given your share of portions for dinner. Mornings meant squeezing into improbable nooks in one of the ships at the Graveyard, the metal in the deepest caverns cool against your skin in a way that was a miracle in the desert. None of the other children grow older with her, at least, not for too long. They either left with some trading ship or, just, vanished. One morning she’s coordinating sectors of a ship with them and the next — it’s like they never existed.

She’s the only one left, still trading with Unkar, still digging, still waiting.

It takes years before she feels it. For a while, it seems like a gift — no more squabbling over who gets what part of the ship, whether or not the split of the portion was fair. But then it starts feeling like a stone in her chest. When a piece of metal catches her shoulder and the sound of her own voice startles her, she resolves to go into the little hub by the market just to hear noise that wasn’t the wind whistling sand into the side of her AT-AT.

It’s been a quiet week, with no large parties of traders staying more than a few hours, if that. So all that’s left hanging around the market are the leashed happabores and other scavengers like her.

They all eye her wearily.

It’s not that scavengers hate other scavengers. They just recognize the fact that they are each other’s competition and, if given the choice, they’d choose their own hides over anybody else’s. Vast as it is, there is a finite amount of salvageable materials in the Graveyard and it’s dwindling everyday.

She returns their look.

There’s a pit, burning acrid smoke into the sky, and a jug with a narrow neck is being passed around the loose congregation. She walks closer to the heat when the jug gets to an old woman called Sim — another of Unkar’s scavengers. She watches as the woman wipes the rim with the edge of her shift that hasn’t been dragging on the ground, then, lifts the jug with both hands and tips it gently into her mouth. She grimaces a fraction and takes another drink, even slower this time. She notices Rey watching, wipes the rim again and beckons for her.

Before Rey is standing fully in front of her, she shakes the jug, the liquid echoing faintly, and says, “Go ‘n.”

Rey looks at her suspiciously, “I’ve got nothing for it.”

The woman shakes the jug again, “First drink’s always free. It’s easier to swindle you when you’re drunk.”

Rey takes the jug with both hands, bringing it closer to her face, and almost tears up.

The fumes make the back of her nose burn and sting her eyes in a way that only happened when she was near an open container of fuel.

She looks incredulously at the woman who waves a motion at her, “Go on.”

Slowly and with both hands, she holds her breath, and tips the jug.

If the the fumes felt like fire to her eyes and sinus, then the drink must have been the core of a star.

She had miscalculated the weight of the jug and took a swig where she intended a sip. By the time she wipes the tears from her eyes and coughed her throat raw, heavy hands and paws come down on her back - congratulatory maybe? Friendly, even?

She gives the jug back to Sim who tilts her head to the spot next to her. “Been wonderin’ when you’d come out of that walker.”

Rey shrugs.

Sim lifts the jugs again and drinks from it, longer this time. She whistles a sharp note and offers the jug in the general direction of the crowd and someone takes it from her, starting its rounds again.

The fire warms Rey’s face but her throat is still raw and there’s a different sort of heat in her chest that she’s not familiar with. She croaks out, “What was that?”

Sim laughs, the sound even rougher than Rey’s voice, “Bit o’ this, bit o’ that. Someone had a shipment of overripe berries and the rest is,” she makes a complicated gesture with her hands, “history.”

The heat in Rey’s chest is dulling to a comforting warmth and she hunches over her knees to try to contain it. Next to her, Sim shifts and, for an alarming second, Rey thinks she’s going to start heaving. Instead, she levers herself up by pressing her palms down on her thighs, her back straightening, and her knees popping sharply. Standing, she moves more agilely than Rey would have thought possible for someone whose joints creaked as loudly as they did. Rey watches as Sim walks a few feet to their left, away from the fire and closer to one of the more solid structures in the market. She brushes the layer of sand that inevitably builds on top of everything and produces a cord. Pulling it reveals a mound of small bottles haphazardly stuffed together, also covered in a thin layer of sand. Sim pulls several out.

She comes back and pushes one in Rey’s face. When Rey does nothing but stare, she sighs, “Told you, first one’s free. You bring me back the bottle, I’ll give you a discount.”

Rey takes it delicately, trying not to disturb the streaks on the dust that Sim’s hands left. “What discount?”

Sim makes a frustrated noise, “I don’t charge you twice its worth.”

Rey is still a little mistified by the bottle when Sim says, “If you don’t want it, girlie —”

“No! No. I — Thank you?”

Sim snorts and walks off with her wares.

Rey wipes the rest of the dust and sand off the bottle, the liquid inside difficult to see from the dark color of the glass. She tries to look at the fire through the bottle, but all she sees is a glow. It’s strange. She’s never been given something. Worked for it, traded for it, sometimes even bought it, but never given. For free.

She examines the bottle again, then pulls the top open. It’s the same fire in the bottle as in the jug, and, very carefully, she takes a drink.

 

(So, when Poe offers her a cup of the Resistance’s Official Unofficial Whiskey from the Totally Non-Existent Distillery in the Closet by the East Wing, and warns her, “It’s a little strong. Red Squadron always gets a little carried away when they’re in charge of the booze,” she smiles and her eyes don’t water.)

 

 

**II. Receiving**

This is what Rey knows: Ama works with engines. Ama has palms that catches on the skin of her hips. Ama works as the mechanic for a ship refuelling at the Outpost. Ama has hair as dark as the night, with curls that get caught between Rey’s trembling fingers. Ama is in the Outpost for three days. Ama, even kneeling, has to hunch to get between her legs.

They’ve wasted a day already.

There’s a tremor building in her left thigh and she lets out a sound, high, long, and quiet. She feels Ama smile against her — the flat of a tongue, a twist of the the finger, a compressor falling off the table behind her — Rey’s hand loosens on the edge of the table while the other tries to smooth the hair she mussed, back to place.

Still crouched below her, Ama grins and hands her the compressor. Out of habit, Rey checks it for any damage before blindly pushing it further onto the table. There was a shift in the light somewhere, an indicator turned on or maybe off, but it distributes the slivers of light in a new pattern and Rey can’t stop looking at Ama’s lips.

It glistens, a little.

She reaches down, her fingers swiping at the corners of Ama’s mouth, “Kriff.”

When Ama’s standing, she gets on her toes and brushes their lips. She says, for good measure, “ _Kriff_ ,” and goes for a kiss.

 

(So, when Poe asks her, lips dragging down her neck, fingers twisting deeper, “How do you want me?” She says, without hesitation, if a little breathlessly, “On your knees.”

Behind her, Finn whispers into the other side of her neck, “Kriff.”)

 

 

**III. Giving**

On the third day, hair wild on the pillows, Ama tells her, “Come with us. And not just because I’m a good lay.”

Rey snorts and sits up, trying to kick off the blankets tangled around their legs. “Who said anything about good.”

Suddenly there’s a voice by her ear, low and sweet, “This dirty little scavenger last night kept telling me,” fingers trail around her waist, pulling her back to the cot, “how good my mouth on her was. Kept doing this breathy little moan,” a puff of air hits Rey’s neck, “like that. Knocked all the compressors and the clips on my work table. Real rude, but she seemed like a trustworthy source.”

Lips are working their way to Rey’s mouth and she turns her head fully to meet them.

“The captain already likes you,” Ama says against her lips.

“The captain had to deal with the Irving Boys before me, of course he likes me.”

There were some wiring issues that required a delicate touch and Rey know’s that the Irving brother who still had all his toes has the deftest hands in the Western Reaches. Rey also knows that those hands tend to pocket things when no one was looking. So, by virtue of believing in the simple rule of keeping her fingers to herself, Rey was offered food and shelter for the three days the ship was docked at the Outpost in exchange for work. It wasn’t particularly difficult work, just tedious and long.

Ama was tasked to show her the ropes.

Admittedly, the work was a lot less tedious with Ama around, but definitely longer.

“I can’t.”

Ama pulls away, “This doesn’t have to be a thing, if that’s the problem. I mean, not a Thing, but maybe a little thing. Where you sneak into my bunk and I sneak into yours and we scandalize the crew. But not, you know, a Thing.”

Rey huffs a laugh and Ama’s lips continues the soft assault against her collarbone.

“I’m serious. You’re good at what you do Rey. You know your ships and it’s not like we’re gonna be sorrier for havin’ another person who knows what to do below the deck other than scream any time something sparks.”

And Rey can see it — being part of a crew, fixing ships instead of taking them apart, flying in open space, Ama between her legs again. Gods, she hasn’t felt a want this heavy since the first year she was stranded in Jakku, small and alone and yearning for —

 _Home_.

She whispers, “I can’t.”

Ama looks at her for a beat then sighs and kisses the underside of her chin, “Well, let’s make it a hell of a see you later then, huh?”

Rey brings their fingers, entwined, to her lips and kisses Ama’s — an apology and thanks. Ama grins and pulls their hands closer, “You know, I’m not the only one who does delicate work with my hands.”

Rey smiles, trailing kisses down Ama’s neck, clever fingers following, “I had this great lay last night. I picked up a couple of things.”

 

(So, when Poe is kissing her knuckles and Finn’s breathing is coming back to normal and one of them says, “You. Are magic.” She says:

“Yes, yes I am.”)

 

 

**IV. Patience**

Waiting is a game that Rey knows how to play.

She waits while the Klatooinian, who’s been around the Outpost since Niima herself established it, rip the heavier machinery to trade back at Unkar’s shack. She waits while the metal of the hull of the Destroyer cool down enough that she can clamber onto it with only two passings of fabric over her hands. She waits while the wind slowly pick at the sand to reveal to her a new opening in the carcass of the ship.

She waits while her fingers heal, raw from trying to pry open a stubborn panel. She waits while the spinning in her head stops as the heat beats down on her. She waits while the gnawing in her stomach lessens to a pang.

She waits days out as a storm rains down sand from every side of her walker. She waits nights out when her chest fills with a weight she doesn’t understand until she’s rubbing tears from her eyes. She waits with every scratch of metal on metal. She waits for over five thousand grooves.

Waiting is a game that Rey knows how to win.

 

(So, when Luke invites her for a meal when she asks him to come back with her, when _that_ turns into another meal and another and the sun is sinking and Luke is offering her a rough cot to sleep on, she just asks Chewbacca to take the Falcon to the nearest outpost to restock and refuel.

He lets out a sound of exasperation and kicks Artoo back up the ramp when the droid starts getting indignant at being dismissed.

They come back three days later and Rey just roots around the ship for a comm unit and says, “I’ll call.”

Chewbacca shakes his head and waves her away, letting out a sound that suspiciously sounds like, “Damned Jedis.”

She’s waving goodbye and turning to start back up the winding stone steps when she hears another yowl from the Falcon. Chewbacca is holding a canvas bag, filled, it seems, to the brim, angular outlines poking out of the thick cloth.

Rey lets out a breath, “For me?”

The wookie tries to shrug, trying to brush off the oncoming thanks. Rey hugs the bag (definitely stuffed) and says with a level of sincerity that she knows make Chewie uncomfortable, “Thank you.”

He waves her off again and _definitely_ says to her back as she navigates the steps with the pack, “Damned Jedis.”

She and Luke watch the Falcon until it’s less than a speck in the sky. She smiles at Luke and shakes the pack a little at him, “I think Chewie packed some caf.”

She digs around the bag and procures a tin, like the one they have on D’Qar, that Poe lamented about. (“Brewing caf is an _art_. This,” he’d pointed at the can that Jessika spooned some flakes from and mixed into her steaming cup, “is an affront.”

Jessika gave him a look and said, “Not at oh-five-hundred it’s not.”)

“Then I think we’ll need hot water.”

After the water boils, Luke prepares the drinks, Rey still a bit unsure of how to measure out the flakes. He hands her a cup and smiles at her and they stay like that, cross-legged and quiet.

For almost a month, they do nothing but sit quietly, letting the salty air curl the hair around their faces. Some nights he tells her about his own desert planet and they commiserate about the grit that never leaves your mouth. Some evenings he asks her about herself and the look of delight that crosses his face when she tells him about her speeder is a surprise and they talk well into the night about it. Some days they sit so still and so quietly in such a relaxed state that something detaches from Rey, like she isn’t _just_ herself anymore and she can feel everything. She _is_ everything — the waves lapping at the sides of the island, the heavy air, the distant thrum of life.

(She always comes crashing back from those, the moment too full and overwhelming. She never expects it, but Luke is always a little more generous with his servings during their meals on those days.)

Chewie, despite her telling him she’ll comm him, signals every week and every week she says, “No, not yet.”

She’s just gotten off a call when she sees Luke waiting for her. Usually, he politely pretends not to hear her, and she politely pretends like she’s not there on a mission to uproot him from his life.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know if I can do what you’re asking of me. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready enough again.”

She sits by their fire and fills the pot with water. She takes out their chipped cups and the now half empty tin of caf.

She smiles at him, “I can wait.”

After the water boils, Luke sits across from her and Rey prepares their drinks.)

 

 

**V. Temptation**

For a desert planet that’s mostly deserted, Jakku is full of temptations.

There’s a thin line between scavenging and thievery and everybody eyes it hungrily, even with Zuvio taking his role as Constable seriously. Everybody draws their lines but, at some point, they all remember that they drew those lines on sand. It wasn’t a rare sight to see a line ending abruptly, frayed from a knife; a body, ransacked of its belongings, at the bottom already being reclaimed by Jakku.

And Rey wants to be above that, to be able to find a line not made on sand, to be as clear as the marks on the side of her AT-AT.

But.

There are days when even the meager portions she tries to store for leaner days are dwindling and she sees a piece of machinery hanging from someone’s net and it would be _so easy._ Just a snag of the rope, her blade quick and sharp. Besides, she’d tell herself, Unkar doesn’t give a damn where you get your wares.

Some days are so bad that she looks at her speeder with resentment, the cargo hauler engines alone could net her maybe fifteen full portions, twenty if Unkar was feeling his version of generous. If she sells it whole, working repulsorlifts and all — _obscene_. It would be an obscene amount of rations and it’s such a foreign concept to her she can’t even see it in her mind.

 _It would be so easy_.

Something in her makes her stop reaching for her knife, for the paneling on the side of her speeder, for the battery that someone turned their eye away from for a second. Something that tells her she will not kill, she will not strip her speeder, she will not steal — you scavenge the dead and you respect the living.

Even armed with this, there are some nights that all she can think of is: _It would be. So. Easy._

Those nights, she just turns over her cot and curls in on herself.

Later, she’ll ask Luke if that _something_ was the Force, not leading her astray. He gives her a fond smile and pats her shoulder, “No, Rey. That was just your conscience. You’re a good person, without or without the guidance of the Force.”

 

(So, when she’s in a forest covered with snow, the ground beneath her cracking, with a man who just killed his father bearing down her throat, desperately telling her, “You need a teacher. I can show you the way of the Force.”

_The Force._

She feels it wash over her, her mind opening.

When she attacks, he falls back.

Something in her surges — power and adrenaline and ragerage _rage_. Her strikes are stronger, more precise, and Ren continues to fall back. There’s something inside of her guiding her where to hit, where to block. It spurs her harder and harder and Ren keeps conceding ground. Even in the snow, she can feel sweat rolling down the back of her neck — there’s a heat in her now and her blood is singing. She pushes him back and back and back until he falls. She strikes again, her blade burning a cut into his face. In the back of her head, she feels that something again, congratulating her on her almost victory. She knocks his saber far from his reach. He doesn’t look small or weak, even crumpled in the snow flecked with his blood, and, standing over him, it makes her feel all the more greatergranderstrongerpowerful. The voice tells her, low in her mind, sweet and utterly logical, she can end this, end him. It would be so simple.

_It would be so easy._

The thought freezes her, a vice around her heart and her throat. _What is she doing._

A chasm opens, then, separating her and Ren.

She turns and runs.

Later, she’ll confess to Luke, of the pull of the rage and hatred, of how much she wanted it. It spills out of her, the guilt and fear. She’s staring at her hands, “If the earth between us didn’t split open, I don’t think — I’m not sure I wouldn’t have done it.”

She looks at him, terrified, “I can’t tell you that I wouldn’t have killed him.”

She lets everything she can’t say flow from her mind, _and I wouldn’t’ve regretted it._

Luke gives her a sad smile and grips her shoulder. He tells her, again, “You’re a good person, Rey.”

She gives him a broken look, “But I wanted it. So badly-”

“You’re a good person because you keep choosing to do the right thing. We’re all tempted, Rey. What matters is what you do.”)

 

 

**+Humidity**

“How are either of you breathing?”

Poe gives her a confused look and Finn says, “You seem alive enough.”

The three of them are sequestered to the side of the airstrip, banished to the corner because Poe kept trying to fiddle with other pilots’ ships. The look of murder Jessika gave him when she saw him arm deep into the guts of her X-wing was enough to convince Poe to the self inflicted exile. When she said, with the utmost decorum, “Sir,” he walked a little faster, dragging Rey and Finn with him.

Rey is sprawled on the ground, none of her limbs touching, like every part of her body is trying to escape the rest of it. Finn is on his back next to her, taking up significantly less space than Rey’s limbs, his feet crossed at the ankles and one of his arms thrown over his eyes. Poe is on her other side, hunched over BB-8 with a small pile of screws and delicate screwdrivers. At some point, he had shifted so that his legs wrapped around and trapped BB-8, the astromech having been trying to escape at every turn.

“Stay still! Where have you even been going that you ports are this dirty?”

The sight is a familiar one.

“How certain are we that the air hasn’t actually solidified and we’re all suffocating slowly.”

Finn looks at her, “It’s a _little_ humid.”

Rey glares at him. He’s in a light shirt and he’s left the jacket back in the Falcon in concession to the weather. Poe has the top half of his flight suit hanging around his waist, wearing a shirt identical to Finn’s. Probably because both were his.

Poe finally releases BB-8 who trills indignantly before rolling away towards back the hangar, ankles and shins destroyed along the way.

Poe stares hard at the retreating white and orange blur, “That R2 unit is not a good influence.”

Rey pushes herself up to her elbows and says, “Don’t let Luke hear you.”

Finn snorts, “I’m pretty sure Luke knows.”

Poe shifts so he’s facing the two of them, “Good training?”

Rey lets out a breath and lays back down, eyeing the darkening sky, “Alright training under extremely bad environment.”

She scrunches her face, “Luke just laughed when I complained about the weather.”

Poe gives her knee a consoling pat while Finn reaches to her shoulder and squeezes.

Finn’s hand on her shoulder is mostly dry and warm and it’s comforting, if a little damp. “Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.”

Poe tilts his head towards the sky and Rey wants to know how he can stand having his hair touch the back of his neck. Her own is piled high on the crown of her head, her usual three knots deemed impractical when the lowest one kept drooping and settling on her nape and slowly driving her insane. He points to the clouds over them, “Besides, this should break soon.”

Rey smiles at the thought of rain. Though, last time it rained in D’Qar the air didn’t feel like it was trying to suffocate her. Humidity, she decides, is not something she ever wanted to get used to.

Rey asks into the sky, “Where’s Dagobah?”

**Author's Note:**

> You literally cannot convince me that there was anything better to do in Jakku than hook up with hot mechanics and drink sand moonshine.
> 
> Hit me [up](http://borncareful.tumblr.com/).


End file.
